Currently, community driven, or community based, business listing and review systems provide a review forum and recommendation service for business listings centered on a defined and/or selected geographical area such as a town or city. Currently, there exist several community based business listing and review systems. Current community based business listing and review systems typically provide listings of local businesses, as well as a review/feedback forum and/or a rating system for the businesses listed. Community based business listing and review systems provide a user with not only an electronic “phonebook-type” listing of businesses, but also a recommendation of those businesses based on input from actual local customers. Consequently, community based business listing and review systems often provide a more relevant database of information to a given user by not only providing reviews associated with businesses within a reasonable distance of the user, but also the reviews posted are more likely to have come from the user's “neighbors”. Consequently, the reviews are posted by people more likely to have similar needs so that community based business listing and review systems provide the user with a stronger sense of connection to his or her community. As result, community based business listing and review systems provide a recommendation function that feels more personalized to the user.
In order for a community based business listing and review system to fulfill its full potential, it is necessary to obtain a significant number of reviews of local businesses, and reviews in as many business listing categories as possible. Consequently, one of the major challenges facing any community based business listing and review system is to encourage customer/user participation in the review process, i.e., to encourage customers/users to take the time to submit reviews. Meeting this challenge has historically proven extremely difficult, especially for new community based business listing and review systems.
One way current community based business listing and review systems attempt to enlist customer/user participation is to contact previous users and generically, or blindly, request they submit reviews. These generic review requests are typically generated in a blind and blanket manner based on the needs of the community based business listing and review system, and without taking into account any specific data about the customer/user or their historical usage of the community based business listing and review system.
As an example, an exemplary community based business listing and review system provider may determine that more reviews in the business listing category “restaurants” are needed in a particular community. Currently, the community based business listing and review system provider will then send out a review request to all customers/users requesting they submit restaurant reviews. Consequently, these generic requests are often sent out to all users in all communities, on behalf of the community based business listing and review system provider, without any regard for a given customer/user's actual prior usage of the community based business listing and review system.
Historically, these generic review requests have been largely ignored by customers and therefore have proven of minimal effectiveness. One reason generic review requests fail is that they are viewed by they customer's as impersonal requests for the customer's input, time, and energy by a large business, i.e., the community based business listing and review system provider, and therefore the customer feels little or no sense of obligation or “community” associated with the request. In addition, the fact that all customers are being asked to review a requested business listing category, regardless of the specific individual user's actual location or historical usage of the community based business listing and review system, once again makes the request feel like an impersonal request from “just another large company trying to get me to help them make money”. Consequently, as noted above, these generic requests are often viewed by the customer/user as an annoyance and the request is often ignored. As a result, community based business listing and review systems often fail to provide the desired variety and number of reviews needed and both the provider and users of the community based business listing and review system are denied the full potential of the system.